In Their Heads Already?

On yesterday's off-day, the collective storyline surrounding the Philadelphia Flyers continued to be how undisciplined they were in game 1 against the Penguins.

In fact, there's been so much talk about it, I wonder if the Flyers may be overly preoccupied with watching what they do on the ice tonight, and not focusing on their game enough.

The Flyers may or may not be able to stay out of the penalty box tonight. Certainly, it would surprise nobody if they had another implosion. After all, this is a team that led the NHL in minor penalties this season, and had 4 players in the top 25 league-wide.

But let's face it. If Philadelphia is so worried about staying out of the box, they're going to have a difficult time getting into any offensive flow. They should be foucsing on their skating and puck support, not on staying out of the box.

You constantly hear teams say, "We have to play our game", or "We have to focus on what we're doing out there". But if you have to pay such close attention to one thing, you may lose sight of the other things you need to do to win.

For the Penguins, that doesn't appear to be an issue right now -- at least after game 1. They seem to be clicking on almost all-cylinders. They are skating, being physical, creating opportunities, playing solid positional defense, and getting good goaltending.

And it looks like it comes natural for them.

Philadelphia?

Not so much.

One player who won't be doing anything on Mellon Arena ice for game 2 tonight (7 PM EST) is Flyer forward Daniel Carcillo, who was suspended one game for his actions late in game 1 when he delivered a blow to the head of Penguins' center Maxime Talbot right after a face-off when Philadelphia was trying to send the proverbial message to the Penguins that they were tougher.

The only message that sent was how dumb they were.

Hopefully Carcillo got the message when the suspension was announced, because he sure didn't sound like he believed he did anything wrong earlier in the day.

Carcillo's claim yesterday was that he knew he didn't hit Talbot with his stick. He said after practice he didn't think he'd be suspended. And this was all after acknowledging that one of the officials told him not to do anything stupid right before the face-off.

No matter. The Flyers are probably going to insert rookie defenseman Luca Sbisa into the lineup in Carcillo's place, play him out-of-position at forward, and they probably won't be worse off.

For the Penguins, don't expect interim head coach Dan Bylsma to make any lineup changes.

That means we should still expect to see RW and tough guy Eric Godard as a scratch, despite the late-game shenanigans by the Flyers.

Here's are 2 ominous stats for Philadelphia fans to chew on:

In their last 15 home games against the Flyers, counting playoffs, the Penguins are 13-2.

Teams that win the first 2 home games of a series go on to win the series nearly 88% of the time.

As I said yesterday, the Penguins will need to up their game tonight because, whether the Penguins are in the Flyers' heads already or not, they have to expect Philadelphia to bring a stronger game. Remember, the Flyers lost game one of their opening series against Washington last year and came back to win the series in the 7th game. They did one better in round 2 against Montreal, losing the opener, then taking the next 4 from the Canadiens.

Of course, they also lost the opening game to Pittsburgh in the Confernece Finals and just got waxed much the same way the rest of that series.

There's such a fine line in the playoffs -- if the Penguins lose tonight, everything they did well in game 1 will mean nothing. For them to truly get the benefit of how dominating they were to start the series, they have to take tonight's contest and go up 2-0 on the Flyers.

During the playoffs, I'll probably be posting more links to other articles of interest. Here are 2 for today, the first from the Canadian Press (via TSN.ca) and the 2nd from a columnist who writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Usually Canadian Press articles are as lame as those from the Associated Press in the U.S., but for some reason, I just liked the way this one was written:

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=275317

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/flyers/20090417_Phil_Sheridan__Flyers_must_change_their_ways.html

Recap late tonight or, more likely, tomorrow.

Let's Go Pens'!